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His quiet trip down to the holding cells of the military base felt very much like déjà vu, but it was another Count in red sitting in the cell when he pulled a chair up to the bars. Slaine Troyard hadn’t moved from the slumped position against the wall, a sprawl of limbs like the blond had simply collapsed onto the cot and hadn’t bothered to move. The green eyes didn’t open even as Inaho sat down.
“I won’t tell you where the Princess is, no matter what you do to me.”
Ah, so Slaine was awake. “That’s not why I’m here.” His left eye whirred as it finally picked up a fractional difference in the blond’s breathing – it was something his presence alone should have done.
“Are you here to goad, then?” The voice was flat and listless, the contrast from the pirated broadcasts so large it was obvious even without the analytical engine.
“Is that what you would have done?” Inaho asked, and he got the barest shrug of a shoulder. “You’re very different from what Seylum-san told me.”
Slaine finally looked at him then, and Inaho had the impression of green, the blue green of clear water in the shallower seas. “Asseylum-hime would never lie.” The fire in the green eyes quickly dulled, and the blond stared at the cell wall instead. “People change.” People break, his left eye supplied.
“She said the same thing to you.” It was an educated guess, but Slaine flinched like he had been physically struck, and even Inaho could tell the way the blond pulled in a leg was defensive.
The sigh was quiet, the voice even quieter. “When is my execution?”
“There isn’t one.”
“If you plan to use me for negotiations, it’s futile. You won’t be able to reach the Princess.”
Inaho blinked, his left eye easing up on its calculations as he reached his conclusion. “The imposter betrayed you.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” It wasn’t wounded pride from defeat, that much Inaho and his left eye agreed on. He left the device to run its algorithms as he stood, and from the way Slaine’s muscles relaxed fractionally he knew the blond thought he was leaving.
It was too bad Inaho had no intension to do so.
The cell door opened with as little protest as the last time, and he felt an urge to frown at the sluggish way the green eyes shifted to him, the gaze resigned and dull. Hopeless, the suggestion came with a mechanical whirl, no flight risk. Slaine didn’t move at his approach, no defensiveness, and Inaho wondered how much conditioning it would take to have induced this learned helplessness. The handcuffs seemed ridiculously pointless.
“You declined medical treatment,” Inaho commented as he sat down on the cot, putting down the first aid kit he had picked up on the way to the cell and pulling out the key to the cuffs. The blond let him remove them without a word, not even a token protest when Inaho pulled off the heavy jacket to roll up the sleeves of the dress shirt.
Inaho didn’t feel the need to fill the silence as he carefully traced the reddening skin with an ointment and wrapped them in bandages, but he paused after both wrists were pristine. Any more removal of clothing required permission if the patient was conscious, but there was spot of blood marring the white fabric; a nick from debris, maybe, or a deeper wound. He doubted Slaine would even care.
He wasn’t sure what he expected when he undid the buttons on the shirt, but the crisscross of fading, angry scars weren't high on the list. His left eye worked to match the markings, long and thin, while his mind went unhelpfully blank for a moment. He shook off the haze as the device came up with possible corresponding instruments for the scars, refocusing his attention on the fresh injuries.
“Why are you here?” The quiet question was unexpected, and Inaho looked up to see that green eyes were watching him, still resigned, still dull, but now with a sliver of confusion.
Not literal, his left eye prompted after a quick analysis of the sound wavelengths. “The Slaine that Seylum-san talked about, and the Slaine that I saw climbing the ranks of Vers; it was too contradictory. I want to know the truth,” Inaho answered simply, some of the unexplained irritation that his left eye had been registering in him settling down at the spark of surprise in the green eyes, “I want to know your objectives.”
“What does it matter now?” Slaine asked, but the wavelengths were different, bewilderment lending life to the quiet voice, “Just to satisfy your curiosity?”
“No,” Inaho lightly traced one of the scars with his fingertips, following the discoloured skin across the blond’s torso, “I just can’t see why one of Seylum-san’s most loyal followers would do the opposite of what she’d want.”
Slaine didn’t respond, verbally or physically. Inaho let a moment, then two, pass in silence on the chance that the blond would choose to reply, before turning his attention back to the wound, tilting his head to make the most of the dim light.
He hadn’t finished disinfecting the graze when Slaine spoke, so softly he had trouble hearing it despite their closeness. “Don’t you have someone you’d do anything for?”
“Even if that person hates you for it?” he offered in return, the green eyes staring unflinchingly back at him.
“It won’t matter what she thinks of me.”
Something in the words made Inaho pause, and his left eye zeroed in immediately. “You don’t plan to be part of the future you’re building.”
“Aren’t you the same?” The smile was hollow and broken, as if all that was left of the mask were shards. “That eye, Terran technology–”
“I am still myself. When was the last time you’ve had the luxury?”
“You think there’s anything left?” Derision made the words come out hard and clipped.
“There is,” Inaho answered without hesitation, faster than even his left eye can process, “or you won’t be like this.” He watched the blond’s face for a long moment, and then busied himself again with the dressing, ignoring the whirling of the analytical engine as it registered Slaine’s quickening breathing and trembling. “The cells aren’t monitored. It’s only us here.”
Inaho had practice pretending not to hear the sounds of someone crying from all the times he used to walk by Yuki-nee’s room when they had been younger, but it was impossible to keep up the pretense when Slaine’s sobbing made the blond’s chest heave in wet breaths and caused so many tremors to run up and down the lithe frame. It was all he could do to keep his hand on the gauze over the newly cleaned wound – wrapping it was impossible.
He reached out with his free hand to keep Slaine from curling up on himself, but the moment his fingers touched the blond’s shoulder, he found himself pulled so close it almost hurt. Slaine’s hands clawed at his back until they fisted into his shirt, face buried against Inaho’s neck. A keening noise escaped, like the blond was holding back screams.
Inaho didn’t say, “It’ll be alright,” because he could see too many futures where it’d be a lie, but he moved to run his hand soothingly down Slaine’s back. Even with his eye, he didn’t know how to fix a person who had torn themselves apart for someone else.